Frankenstein − Rehearsal Insights Contents About.............................................................................................1 Rehearsal Diary .................................................................2 Interviews ...........................................................................7 Danny Boyle.................................................................7 Nick Dear ...................................................................11 Suttirat Anne Larlarb.................................................16 1 Frankenstein − Rehearsal Insights Frankenstein − Rehearsal Insights AboutInterview with Suttirat This learning pack supports the National Theatre’s production of Frankenstein, directed by Danny Boyle, which opened on 22nd February 2011 at the National’s Olivier Theatre in London. These insights were prepared during rehearsals by staff director Abbey Wright. They introduce the process of creating, rehearsing and staging this play. 1 Frankenstein − Rehearsal Insights Rehearsal Diary Week One Nick [Dear, writer] has been writing his version of Frankenstein for nearly 15 years – I have heard a rumour he is on draft number 147! Actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller will alternate the roles of The Creature and Victor Frankenstein. Over the years, he and Danny [Boyle, director] began to see aspects of the Creature’s character and situation as relating to autism. Danny is keen for Benedict and Jonny to be able to meet children with autism and Asperger's syndrome as part of their rehearsal process. We visit Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee School to look at how this could work. The school is a wonderful place, and we are able to meet some of the students and teachers. Back at the rehearsal room we meet with Underworld, who are composing the music for the production. Rehearsal room one is big with a high ceiling and its own revolve to imitate the stage of the Olivier. Danny suggests to Underworld the idea of a train representing Ingolstadt and the Industrial Revolution, to run down the central tracks from the Upstage doors and shoot out into the audience. Rather than taking the Creature outside onto the street, we bring the town to him. The train can have both live and recorded sound and be a powerful presence physically. Toby Sedgwick, the Director of Movement begins work with Jonny and Benedict by exploring the neutral mask. The Creature is an innocent. He is like an adult baby, with no sense of who he is or the world around him, and he must discover everything. Being able to start from a position of neutrality is a useful tool for this. I join Alastair Coomer (Deputy Head of Casting) to meet some actors for parts which are yet to be cast, and for understudy roles. Danny is keen to start immersing the actors in other elements of production as early as possible and we do a make-up test for the 22 FrankensteinFrankenstein − Rehearsal Insights InterviewRehearsal with Diary Suttirat Creature. There is discussion about the pattern and size of the scarring but it is apparent that the concept for the Creature make-up is a work of art. Designs by Suttirat Anne Larlarb Week Two We work for a week just with Benedict and Jonny. This is concentrated work, which Danny keeps fresh by mixing up research trips, text work, and physical work with Toby. Danny says the play is a two-hander and he wants the two of them to dominate the cavernous Olivier auditorium. During this period of rehearsal, before the rest of the company join, they have the opportunity to work intensively with Toby. They each begin to find their own distinctive physicality for the Creature 3 FrankensteinFrankenstein − Rehearsal Insights InterviewRehearsal with Diary Suttirat through a series of organic physical exercises; levels of tension, fear and joy, and work with elements. Both are playful and physically intelligent actors and this work provides the basis for devising a sequence of movement which will represent the Creature’s birth. Danny and Nick want to tell the story from the Creature’s point of view and to give him his voice back, so it is important that we begin the production at the start of the Creature’s journey and watch him learning to speak and discover the world. This work is very exposing for the actors and very personal, and it is thrilling to watch it develop. Speech therapist Annie Morrison visits rehearsals. She talks about the stages of development in a child’s brain and stresses the rapidity of the development of speech in a child. Danny suggests that the Creature exceeds our expectations, and one of the great strengths of the play is that every time we see the Creature he has shot forward. Through the De Lacey scenes he learns to speak and he always surprises us, knowing more than we expect him to. Nick and Danny want the audience to feel great empathy for the Creature – we shouldn't see him as a monster but as a child who learns from others. The rehearsal room walls are covered in images which have inspired Danny and his design team and which act as a portal for the actors, offering them a visceral reference of the world we’re creating. These images are of skin, stitching on the body, strange tattoos, foetuses, autopsies, death and are horrifying but human and compellingly beautiful. Using these images the company can begin to get a sense that it isn’t a naturalistic world we’re creating, but more of an adult fairytale. Danny feels compelled to give the Creature his voice back, and strip away the crude monster ticks of the movies. Rehearsing the roles of Victor and the Creature in tandem with the two actors is a fascinating process. I heard Danny say that it breaks the monolithic concentration an actor has on his own role within the process. The rewards of working this way, with two such extraordinary actors, are huge. They are extremely generous with one another and 4 FrankensteinFrankenstein − Rehearsal Insights InterviewRehearsal with Diary Suttirat share the discoveries they make about each character. But the major advantage, I would suggest, is that they know the play and these two characters inside out. When they are on stage together, they are really listening to each other, and the connection between them is electric. Week Three This week we welcome the rest of the company into rehearsals. It's wonderful to hear the play as it will be and to meet the cast. We start some initial ensemble rehearsals and research before a break for Chistmas. At this stage we aks a lot of questions about the play. Why does Victor agree to make the Female Creature? Why does he then destroy her? Why does the Creature rape Elizabeth? We talk a lot about Victor’s fear of love and the Creature’s great capacity for love. Perhaps this is why Victor destroys the Female Creature. Week Four Back in the New Year and the production is fast upon us… We work intensively, stitching scenes together and Benedict and Jonny have little time to stop. The play thrives on a muscular, fast-paced delivery and so we are working towards achieving that. 5 FrankensteinFrankenstein − Rehearsal Insights InterviewRehearsal with Diary Suttirat Danny encourages the company to look at how they use the word ‘Monster’ when it appears in the play. He doesn’t want any general monster-bashing. We explore the specificity of that term and why each person says it; is it out of fear? And fear of what? Difference? Danny also asks the company to look for wonder in their performances. His big note of the week is ‘Why so serious?’ The company are enjoying discovering the humour of the play. Week Five We are now into running the play and it is thrilling. It strikes me as a bleak journey from the womb to some sort of purgatory. We focus on goodness. Are we all born good? What about self-destruction and the human tendency toward vice? This is what constitutes the tragedy of the play for me: the fact that the two men destroy themselves. I start to work with the understudies, which is rewarding on a show this powerful. They are enjoying finding their way through the play, and embracing the more physical elements. Week Six We open our rehearsal room doors to other people from the building. The double-casting of course means double the runs. With each run the piece feels fuller, faster and more moving. Danny and Mark Tildesley (the Set Designer) have designed a huge mirror wedge decked with three and a half thousand light bulbs to hang over the stage and auditorium. Danny explained that he wanted the advent of electricity to be hanging over the production. Each light bulb will be wired individually in situ in the Olivier. We are now at the point where the company need all of the elements: the fire, the birds, the rain, the revolve. And we are all excited to move into the theatre. 6 Frankenstein − Rehearsal Insights Interview with SuttiratDanny Boyle Interview with Danny Boyle, Director Why Frankenstein? There have been so many versions of it. Nick and I have been working on this one for a long time but stopped because of the latest cinematic version, the Kenneth Branagh/Robert De Niro one which just scared everybody off for a bit. So we actually dropped it for a number of years. It was the fact that it’s a great story. The adaptation was a chance to do two things. One was to give the Creature his voice back which he clearly does have in the Shelley book and yet the movies often ignore that. More recently, they’ve given him his voice back but he’s retained the monster ticks – so he evokes pity often, but rarely do you see things from his point of view. So it was a chance not just to give him back his voice but to actually make him the engine of the whole story, he’s the axle of the story because you begin it with his birth – which is dissatisfying to a lot of scholars.